Stamp Out Hunger: USPS Food Drive Saturday

This coming Mother’s Day, make Mom proud. Join thousands of postal carriers and millions of Americans in participating in the nation’s largest, one-day food drive, this Saturday, May 9.

The U.S. Postal Service proudly joins the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and Campbell Soup Company to support the NALC Stamp Out Hunger National Food Drive, designed for people to help those in need right in their own city or town.

Show Mom some love by donating non-perishable food to help some 35.5 million people, including 12 million children, who face hunger every day in America. The process to donate is simple: Put non-perishable food items in a bag and place it by your mailbox. Your letter carrier will pick it up and deliver it to local food banks.

“This Stamp Out Hunger drive is a tradition entering its 17th year,” said Postmaster General John E. Potter. “The generosity of our customers has filled food banks and pantries all across the nation. Our employees will further demonstrate their powerful reach into each of their communities and how our assistance helps those in need.”

Letter carriers in more than 10,000 cities and towns across America will deliver much more than mail when they walk and drive along their postal routes to collect food donations for distribution to community banks and pantries throughout the country. Nearly 1,500 local NALC branches in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands are involved in the drive.

To promote this year’s drive, the Postal Service’s Priority Mail and Campbell Soup co-sponsored the printing of 130 million postcards encouraging the public’s participation. Public service announcements featuring movie and television stars David Arquette and Courteney Cox, as well as the Harlem Globetrotters, are being made available throughout the country. Valpak Direct Marketing Systems is focusing 40 million of its envelopes on encouraging food donations and Valassis is promoting the drive with 85 million of its mail-delivered Red Plum wraps.

Other co-sponsors of the drive are Feeding America, formerly known as America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s food bank network; the United Way of America and its local United Ways; and the AFL-CIO.

In 2008, NALC members, with the assistance of rural letter carriers, other postal employees and numerous other volunteers, collected 73,113,915 pounds of food for the needy from postal customers. That brought the total for the first 16 years of conducting the drive to nearly one billion pounds of food.